


The Mary Celeste

by Vixvox



Category: World of Warcraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:03:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23899450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vixvox/pseuds/Vixvox
Summary: The story of the once proud "Mary Celeste" a pirate ship and what happens when a greedy loan shark attempts to steal it.





	The Mary Celeste

**Author's Note:**

> So this story is an adaption of a tale told at an event with The Fence Macabre, a guild that does awesome Forsaken themed events on Wyrmrest Accord. The tale was told by my character Fiona Tarwood.
> 
> Read more at  
> Ko-fi (SFW) https://ko-fi.com/vixvox  
> SFW Twitter @Vixvox3  
> Patreon (NSFW) https://patreon.com/vixvox  
> NSFW Twitter @VixvoxT

Kul-Tirans can tell you the tale of The Mary Celeste. It was a privateer vessel in service to one of the wealthier families of the land. They brought profit and plunder to their patrons and themselves, but to most the world they were little more than the vilest of brigands.

The ship’s crew and captain have many tales of banditry, destruction, and evil to their names. But that isn’t what matters to this story. Instead, this is a story about family.

You might be thinking that a famous privateer’s family would be set to take over the business. That they would terrorize the waters from here to Kul-Tiras and everywhere in between. But families don’t always work like that, and sometimes sons and daughters lose their parent’s way.

So it was with Carmen’s line, that fell into poverty after one too many failed raids robbed the ship of its wealth and value. Scuttlebutt holds that the families fall was due to witches, but just as many thought it was just foolishness and weakness.

After all, how can you claim to be a wicked dread pirate, if you can’t stare a man down after gutting his loved ones.

Whatever caused their fall, the family barely held on. They sold their holdings. Sold their jewels. Even sold off the captain’s old maps so that others could find Carmen’s buried treasures. But one thing they never sold, was The Mary Celeste itself.

Most took this as confirmation of a curse. But there was one man that didn’t care and had his eyes set upon that prize.

His name was William Porter, and he was exactly what you imagined from a loan shark. Skinny as a twig, dressed in a fine suit, bad wig. The very spitting image of slime. One thing that can be said about him, was that he was a big thinker.

He had an idea that if he could claim “The Mary Celeste” for himself, he could use it as a status symbol. The man that conquered Carmen’s legacy, without half the trouble that navy’s across Azeroth threw at her to bring her down.

His plan was to put the Celeste line in debt, by giving them whatever they asked for. Money to pay for rent? Done. Money for food? Done. He made sure that every copper coin was accounted for, signed for, and collected until he had enough money that any court in Kul Tiras would have gladly thrown them in jail to pay their debts.

As the debt climbed and the family was more desperate for his help, William told all of Kul Tiras about his generosity and kindness. It was villainy with good publicity, the kind that you could only see from the most devious of long cons. 

To this day, friends of the family wondered how they ever fell for the trap, but desperation makes bad decisions real easy to make.

When the debt was close to 1,000 gold, that’s when William sprung his trap.

He showed up at the family home out the blue, backed by a quarter dozen of Kul Tiras’ finest guards. He had a warrant for their arrest in one hand and a kind offer in the other. 

The family saw him coming and knew something was amiss. They were nervous and sweating and watched William enter their home. They watched as he walked the full circle around the room coming to stop in front of a ship in a bottle that depicted Carmen’s ship…a relic of the woman’s ego perhaps.

He flicked his fingers against the ship then turned to tell the family why he was there.

“You can either sign over your estate and The Mary Celeste or you can live out your days in jail and I’ll still get my hands on the ship. What will it be?”

He expected crying and begging or a quick surrender. But what William got was something in between.

The matron of the family threw herself down on her knees and begged, “Please Mr. Porter, take our home, take our wealth, put us to work, but leave the ship untouched. Just it lie where it is.”

William was amused, so he asked the matron about her strange request.

She told him, “Carmen is angry at us for letting her legacy fall to ruin and swears that until a worthy captain takes to the sea, then she’ll bring whomever holds the ship to ruin.”

William scoffed at the idea. “If that’s the case, then why didn’t you sell it earlier?”

The matron told him, “We can’t give a curse away! That’s a crime of the highest order.”

Well, William didn’t believe in curses or witches. So he gave her plea a moment’s consideration.

“I’ll take that ship and prove to you that the only curse for your family’s ruin is incompetence! But I’ll tell you what, I’ll offer you ten loaves of bread and a stick of butter, so you don’t starve in the next week.”

The family didn’t want to submit, but what choice did they have. William Porter’s trap was backed by the law and they could either go to jail that day and surrender the ship later or give up and live to choose their own fates. 

“Even in poverty,” the matron did say, “We choose to live life by our own means! But I warn you true, you may regret this choice sooner than later.”

William took The Mary Celeste and had it tugged to a private harbor that night as the greedy man plotted how best to make use of his new acquisition.

But so flush from his success, he couldn’t decide. So he opted to sleep on it and let the matter lie until a later day. He slept in his bed that night, comfortable and warm with the wicked thoughts that filled his black heart.

But when he awoke, he realized straight away that something was wrong. He wasn’t in his four corner bed draped over with elven silk sheets. He didn’t smell the roses from the garden right outside his window. He didn’t even have that familiar taste of salt in the air so common in Kul Tiras’ best cities.

Nay, he found himself in what looked like a captain’s quarters. A rustic bed made of redwood, a heavy desk pushed against a corner, and a single door that led out.

He exited the room calling for his butler. Because surely this was just a momentary madness or a mage’s trick. It couldn’t actually be his true home.

But as he left the room, he found himself on the deck of a ship. But not just any ship. He found himself on The Mary Celeste, trapped inside a glass bottle. The only exit from the bottle was sealed by a fat piece of cork he wasn’t strong enough to dislodge.

He realized then that it wasn’t only that he was trapped in the bottle. But he was trapped in the previous day. He watched as the Celeste family stared in a huddle at a familiar figure circling the room. He watched as the weasel-faced man made his way around the room and paused at the glass bottle to flick a finger across it.

William tried to call to himself, but his former self didn’t seem to care or focus about anything but his conquest to be.

So there he was, left to watch his theft of the Celeste family legacy and the insulting offer of bread and butter as a pittance to help them on their way.

When William left the room, he watched the family cry and discuss what they would do next. William listened close as he hoped for some sort of clue to get out of this strange situation.

What he heard surprised him.

“We are finished,” the matron told her family, “as soon as Carmen’s ghost discovers our loss, she will kill us. But, I feel sorry for William Porter, because his fate is far worse to be sure.”

William was taken aback. Did the family actually pity him? Did they know about this new fate he’d find himself in?

Whatever it was, William wouldn’t have it. He smacked his fists against the glass, threw himself into the walls of his new prison, and screamed and shouted for aid, but still no one heard him.

All William could do was watch as, over the course of the next day, the family gathered up chairs, tied ropes to the ceiling, and then shut off the lights.

Then he woke up.

He gasped and clutched his chest and looked around expecting to be free of his nightmare. But there he was, still in a captain’s quarters with a sole door leading out the room.

William Porter fled the room and once more he found himself inside a glass bottle. Left alone to watch the last days of the family Celeste. So it was that he watched again and again how his villainy and greed led to their demise.

It was ten days of this before William’s mind snapped. On the eleventh day when he awoke, he didn’t leave that room. Instead, he threw himself down to the side of the bed and prayed and begged to The Holy Light, the Troll Loas, to the Old Gods, to anyone that he thought might have listened.

“Please release me from this torture! I’ll return the Celeste legacy and will give them the wealth that belongs to their line. Just please release me from this dark fate!”

He begged and prayed and shouted all day long even as he listened to the voices of the Celeste line preparing their suicide outside of the room. But William refused to watch or give up as he saw no other options left to him.

He just had to hope and pray.

He prayed and hoped even when the lights went out.

~~~

When he woke up, he expected to see the old redwood bed and the single door that left out the room. He expected to bear witness to the deaths of the Celeste line or his own theft of The Mary Celeste.

As he opened his eyes, he realized that things were different.

He smelled roses from a garden outside the window. He tasted the sea salt air of a proper Kul Tiran city. He even felt the soft warmth of elven sheets splayed out across his bed. His chest heaved as he breathed in and realized that he was back home…and he had a chance to set things right.

He leapt out of bed, not bothering to change out of his sleeping robes. He kicked on doors as he left telling the wait staff to prepare his stagecoach, and told everyone who could hear that he had to hurry to the Celeste family household.

He leapt into his coach and clenched himself into a ball as he waited. When they arrived, he didn’t even wait for someone to open the door as he had thrown himself out and raced up to the front door.

“WAIT!” he shouted, as he barreled through the front door, just in time to watch as the matron of the house kickedthe chair out from beneath her feet.

William raced to grab the woman’s hips and hold her aloft as he begged the others to not kill themselves.

“I realize that I was wrong and that the curse is real. I’ll return your ship and give you wealth to start over. Just please don’t give up! I beg of you!”

The matron stared down at the weasel of a man and saw sincerity in his eyes. She decided to live and give him a chance to make amends with the hopes that his help would end the curse of The Mary Celeste.

William was true to his word in funding the Mary Celeste to learn the family trade of sailing. He paid for the family to hire a crew. He paid for a cartographer to give them a map and when the family was ready, he sent them on their way.

To this day, no one knows what happened with the Celeste line or William Porter. But what this teaches is a simple truth. Never attempt to profit off a dread pirate’s reputation and fame, because even beyond the grave it will end poorly.

/say But each time, the family looked sicker and paler, hungrier and dirtier. It was clear that every day that passed would bring the line closer to their doom and it was William's fault.

/pray

/say Good Greedy William threw himself down to his knees and prayed to witches, Gods, the Light, coin, whatever he could think of. "Please please give me a chance to make things right! I didn't know! I didn't know!"

/say He prayed and prayed until he could pray no more and collapsed to unconsciousness.

/me pauses for effect and smiles.

/say Well, when he woke up, he threw open the door to his bedroom and found himself, NOT in a bottle or anywhere near the Mary Celeste, he found himself back in his home.

/say After thankin' the Light, the Gods, and Witches, he ran out the house, rushed down to the old Celeste house and found the family seconds before they hung themselves from despair.

/say He told them that he understood their plight, how greed may have made Carmen Celeste's life easy but brought her family to ruin, and how he wanted to avoid the fate for his line.

/say He returned their possessions, canceled the debt, and closed his business and went back to his first love of fine cooking.

/say So the next time you go to a restaurant and order Portherhouse steaks, you can thank Kul Tiras for inspiring Good William Porter to make that a reality!

/me snickers at the throwaway pun at the end, bows, and departs the stage.


End file.
